


pretending i was made for you

by explosivesky



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 12:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17642516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosivesky/pseuds/explosivesky
Summary: Yang's fourteen the first time she meets her soulmate, but not according to the color of her eyes. Her heart, though - her heart's a different story. Blake turns her back on fate, wants to believe there's a love that belongs to her. It's one more thing they don't talk about.I swear, Yang says, I swear it should've been you.





	pretending i was made for you

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up being the most popular fic i have ever posted on tumblr, so i figured it deserved its own post. 
> 
> prompt: an au where your eyes turn the same color as your soulmate’s aura when you first meet/make eye contact with them. Blake and Yang don’t realize they’re soulmates because that’s already their natural eye color.

Yang’s fourteen the first time she meets her soulmate. It’s young, by most standards; the average time frame is somewhere between eighteen and thirty-five, though outliers aren’t exactly rare. It’s supposed to be simple, instantaneous: you lock eyes with the love of your life and your irises flush with the color of home, of serenity, of belonging. It’s the story of every fairytale, the subject of every rom-com. All anyone wants is to exchange gazes with a pretty stranger and discover the rest of their life.

Eyes are the window to the soul, Summer had always said playfully when she was still a child. Your eyes change color when you’ve found your soulmate, because windows don’t just allow us to look out - they reflect what’s looking in.

I don’t get it, Yang would always complain back. I _like_ my eyes. They’re purple. They’re _pretty_.

Summer would laugh. They are, she’d agree. But you might like them more when they’re the color of what you love.

Yang never really understands her. She always loves the lilac of her eyes, loves them like darkening sunsets, like flourishing gardens, like the gemstones she sees bound into jewelry. She never grows out of it, never hits a year where she finds a color she thinks of loving more.

There’s a reason for that.

Yang’s fourteen the first time she meets her soulmate. It’s not that rare. What _is_ rare about it is the fact that neither of them know until much, much later.

\--

It’s their first day at Signal Academy. She’s wearing the same uniform as everybody else, blazer on, collar buttoned, tie fitted and proper. Weiss keeps chattering nervously under her breath - there’s so many new _people,_ she keeps saying, how will I even _know,_ what if my eyes change and I don’t notice for another two classes - and Blake only shrugs, humoring the rant. 

“You’re supposed to feel it, too, aren’t you?” she says. “Like, it’s not just that your eyes change. I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

“Like I’m just supposed to _know?_ ” Weiss says dramatically, as if it’s a test she hadn’t studied for, a novel she’d left unfinished. 

Blake’s about to open her mouth, snarky reply already sitting on her tongue - isn’t that the point of a soulmate, that you look at them and _feel -_ when a girl bumps lightly into her side as they’re piling into the auditorium, immediately turning to apologize. Her repentant smile’s already in place, blonde hair long and spiraling down her spine, but the minute she meets Blake’s eyes, every word dies on her lips. 

The world ends, actually. There’s no ground left for Blake to walk on, no path forward. There’s no school, no students, no sky, no sun - those last two are suddenly standing in front of her, bottled up in the form of a tall, somewhat lanky girl with her backpack slung over one shoulder, collar unbuttoned, tie loose around her neck. She’s staring, _staring_ the same way Blake is, her irises the color of thunderstorms reflecting over water - the lilac of them the same heaviness of clouds - she reminds Blake of a place she’s lived before, of a solitude, of a home--

“Blake?” Weiss calling her cuts abruptly through her reverie. “What are you doing?”

“Blake?” the girl repeats softly, a voice she swears she remembers, something ancient and vivid, something beyond the breadth of time. 

“Yes,” Blake says breathlessly. “And - you’re…?” 

“Yang,” she says, and her name sounds like the only right note Blake’s ever heard. 

“Yang,” she echoes, lips curling shyly. “Hi.” 

“Hi,” Yang says back, also nervous but too pretty to look like it. Sure, she’s a little lanky, still growing into herself, but she’s - fuck, she’s the most beautiful person Blake’s ever seen; there’s no way she isn’t - there’s no way this--

“What color are my eyes?” Blake blurts out, needing confirmation. Her heart pounds against her chest like something trapped and flightless. 

“Gold,” Yang says, but no, that’s wrong, that’s all wrong. “Mine?” 

“Lavender,” Blake says, and sees Yang’s expression dip into a similar subtle confusion.

“That--” Yang starts, stops, falters with her bottom lip pulled into her mouth. “That can’t be right.” 

Blake’s nails are digging into her palms. “I know.” 

“ _Blake,_ ” Weiss says again, having pushed her way backwards through the crowd. “What’s _wrong_ with you?” She stops, hand curling around Blake’s upper arm, taking in the source of her arrest. “Who’re you?” 

“Yang,” Blake answers for her, dry and cracking. “This is Yang.” 

“Okay,” Weiss says slowly, clearly noticing something amiss but having no physical proof of it. “Well, Yang, I’m Weiss. If you’d like to join us for the welcome assembly, feel free.” 

“Sure,” Yang says, gaze dropping low. Her bottom lip is red from the way she’d gnawed on it, struck by what Blake hopes is the same intensity. “That’d be nice.”

They don’t speak again until they’re seated on a bench the third row from the top, listening idly to the chatter of the other students; Weiss wraps up a boy with blue hair into a conversation, recognizing Blake’s apparently lost her bite. Even if she pries later, Blake won’t know what to tell her. Everything’s changed, somehow; everything’s changed except the one thing that matters.

“It’s funny,” Yang finally says, blonde hair swinging over her shoulder and not quite managing to hide the sadness of her smile. “The way everyone talks about soulmates - I swear it should’ve been you.” 

\--

It doesn’t stop them. It doesn’t even come close.

They wind their way into each other’s lives, tighter than rope, thicker than thread. There used to be all this empty space, all these closed doors and alleyways, and now it’s Blake who lives there, takes it over with a crooked smile and sharp jab. Yang can’t get enough of her, can’t even remember what she did before Blake bumped into her life.

Weiss picks up on it easily, allows Yang into their friendship without a complaint, like dusting off a chair that always had her name on it and saying _sit._ Blake doesn’t trade her in, and that’s what counts, even if every other free moment she has is spent wrapped up in Yang’s arms. That’s the part they don’t talk about.

It’s too hard to be around Blake without touching her, magnetized, polarized. Yang links their fingers, watches the blood rise to the surface of Blake’s cheeks, wants to believe that belongs to her while simultaneously knowing it doesn’t. It’s an uphill battle, the burden of fate and recognizing it exists - if Blake is meant for someone _else,_ how can Yang reconcile feeling anything at all? 

Blake’s on the phone with her dad out back, begging him for permission to spend the night; Weiss’s parents never seem to care what she’s out doing and permission is assumed. Tai’s taking Ruby to tour some fancy school up north and they have the house to themselves. Sometimes Yang likes to be alone; or she used to. Now her version of alone always ends in company. 

Weiss is scrolling through her phone distractedly when Yang finally breaks; it’s been five months and a lifetime. She can’t believe she’s still so young.

“Do you think you can love someone even if you’re not supposed to?” she asks, staring blankly up at the ceiling. It doesn’t come out exactly the way she wants it to, but nothing ever does.

Weiss pauses, doesn’t lift her eyes from her phone, though her finger stops flicking. She’s silent for a long time, long enough that Yang doesn’t think she’s going to answer at all, focusing on Blake’s pleading voice in the yard with her eyes shut. She’s almost dozed off to it, drifting like a tide she’s on, when--

“I don’t know,” Weiss says quietly, uncertainly. Yang snaps her eyelids open, tilts her head up; Weiss has dropped her phone entirely, fingers toying with a loose thread on the blanket draped across the couch. “I...I used to think a lot of things until I met you, until I saw you with Blake. And now - now I don’t know.” 

Yang’s too afraid to ask her what she means and so she doesn’t. Blake transitions into relief and appreciativeness, glancing at Yang through the glass with her heart sitting on her lips, smile spread wide. 

“Yeah,” Yang echoes, her own mouth stretching in response, crinkling the corners of her eyes. It isn’t the first time Yang thinks about forever, but it’s the loudest. “I don’t know, either.”

\--

They make it another two years. Later on, Yang’ll laugh and call it a miracle they even made it that long without snapping, without the string between them looping itself around and tying them together. Yang lives in her bed, in her room, in her eyes - she rides her bike over on weekends with a backpack and doesn’t leave until Sunday nights, learns how to crack an egg one-handed from Ghira, lets Kali teach her about soil and what grows best when. They spend a memorable afternoon planting flowers in the nooks of the garden; it’s an illusion, Kali explains. I want it to feel like so much is blooming it’s pouring out of the frame. Like a painting that extends past its canvas.

Yang presses her playfully against the back of the bathroom door, streak of dirt still on her cheek, skin somewhat sweaty. “That’s you,” she says, and Blake’s heart is somewhere buried in that garden. Her smile sits lopsided, honest. “Like there’s so much of you in me I can’t contain it.” 

“Yang,” Blake says helplessly, her irises a softer color than any single one of those budding petals. “You can’t - you can’t say shit like this.” 

“Why not?” Yang asks, and Blake thumbs the dirt on her cheek, spreads her palm against her face, and gives up entirely. 

When she kisses Yang, well, that’s when she knows the universe is out of tricks - there’s nothing that can possibly prepare her for the devastating perfection of it, the rush of watching a falling sky, the flash of a collapsing sun, the taste of the ocean sitting on her lip. Blake kisses her and Yang swallows her heart whole, cups it carefully in her own chest. Her soul shoves everything out of the way, declutters. _It’s you_ , she thinks. _It should’ve been you._ Blake kisses her and wonders how much of love belongs to her.

Yang hears her thoughts like she writes them down, speaks them aloud; she catches her mouth again, tangles her fingers through Blake’s hair. “All of it,” she murmurs. “All of it’s yours, and all of mine’s yours, too.”

“Don’t,” Blake whispers, her lifeline pressed against Yang’s heart, her own heart, where the both of them are beating as one. 

“Too late,” Yang says, drawing so close she blurs to nothing.

\--

They’re too far gone to stop. Yang turns out the lights when it’s time for bed and they’re wide awake in the night, overcome by all its potential for secrets and possibilities, denial and destruction. Yang kisses her again, sucks hotly on her bottom lip, and Blake’s spine arches. Yang wedges a knee between her thighs, crouches over her. She looks like something dark and mythical, blonde hair wild and muscles defined, moonlight catching in her curves. “Fuck fate,” Yang breathes against her mouth, fingers tugging at the hem of her shirt. “If I’m not meant for you, then I’m not meant for anyone.” 

Blake swallows against the tears until Yang’s steady enough to distract her from them, teeth nipping at her pulse point, followed by a flattened tongue. Blake tilts her head back, gasps, finds the stars in her veins, finds her skin like a compass, wants to pull herself apart and say _here, here, here; I swear you’ve been here._

“Yang,” she breathes out, fingers knotting in Yang’s hair, and prepares to pour forever. It’s Yang. There’s always going to be something left. “I love you,” she chokes out, hit with wave after wave after wave. “I love you. I love you.” 

“I know,” Yang whispers, smoothes her bangs away from her forehead, lips red and wet in the dim light. Blake drags her down, tastes herself on Yang’s mouth. “I love you, too.” 

“If we aren’t soulmates,” Blake says, “we must be so much more than that.”

“Show me,” Yang says, touches their temples together, and Blake swallows, her fingers slipping over skin.

\--

They know Weiss knows, but she never says anything about it. She’s the one who finds them in their quiet moments alone, orbiting each other and redefining gravity. Yang steps up behind her in the kitchen and stretches for a mug, the space between them collapsing itself as if it refuses to be the reason they can’t touch. Blake reaches for her hand between classes and it reeks of more intimacy than sex, their fingers intertwining and tugging closer. Weiss’s blush sits delicately in her cheeks and she turns away.

They’re studying in Blake’s bedroom one evening. Blake’s resting with her head in Yang’s lap, book between her hands, and Yang’s stroking her fingers through her hair. Occasionally she dips to Blake’s cheekbone, her jawline; Blake only tilts her head to the side, allowing it. When Weiss leaves tonight, she knows Yang won’t. The bed sits behind them, hastily made, pillows askew. Weiss tries not to picture them and fails, thinks of them melting together and smearing like paint, thinks of the stubbornness of their eyes and how much it must hurt to see them as they’ve always been. 

She’s never met soulmates like them. She’s never met anything like them. It’s so effortless, so right for something so wrong; she holds the world in her hand and rips a piece of it up like paper, unravels it one layer at a time. There’s a truth somewhere. There’s a love that can exist for them, a destiny that allows it. There must be.

Yang glances up, catches her staring. “What?” she asks softly; Blake’s dozed off against her, book resting against her ribs.

“If I don’t end up with what you and Blake have,” Weiss whispers, troubled, “then I don’t think I want it.”

\--

They follow each other to Beacon, of course; it’s the next logical step from Signal. The entrance exams aren’t as tough as they’re made to believe they’ll be, but there are all kinds of bizarre in-betweens - at one point their fingers are pricked for their blood types, and another has an eye-scan to mark their bonds and the strength of them, though Yang has no idea how any of that works - and then they’re sent home to wait for a week while results are processed.

All three of them are accepted; Blake and Yang are miraculously placed in the same dorm, share all the same classes - who’d you fucking bribe for _that,_ Weiss snarks exhaustedly as she looks up her own roommate on social media, and even Ruby snickers from where she’s sitting on the couch. Yang only grins, Blake tucked against her side. 

Fate, she says ominously, and Blake laughs until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

\--

It’s their sparring class where the extraordinary happens. It’s not a place they expect to find answers and so they aren’t searching for them. Yang’s resting her chin in her hand, dutifully taking notes, her hair up in a careless bun with loose strands curling around her face. Blake’s half-listening, half-staring; Yang’s only grown more beautiful over the years, and sometimes it just hits her, pummels her like an ocean. Like drowning from too much oxygen. 

“I need a soulmate pair for this demonstration,” Glynda calls, running a finger through her notes. “There’s a few in this class, I see - Miss Xiao Long and Miss Belladonna, why don’t we start with you?” 

There’s a pause. “What?” Yang asks, taken aback, chin slipping off her hand.

“You and Miss Belladonna will be a perfect pair for this exercise,” Glynda says, adjusting her glasses and looking over her notes. “Your bond is already incredibly strong - unusually strong, I’d say. When did the two of you meet?” 

“Fourteen,” Blake answers on autopilot since Yang looks suddenly incapable of speaking, staring at their instructor in complete confusion. “But we - um - we aren’t. Soulmates, I mean.” The words sting as much as they always do.

Glynda’s gaze slips up to them, eyebrows high. “What do you mean?” she asks, sounding as bewildered as the two of them must look. “Of course you are. It’s in your files.” 

Blake blinks. “In our--” 

“Our eyes didn’t change,” Yang interrupts, a note wavering under her voice that doesn’t match the steadiness of her tone. The class is watching them raptly. “When we met. So we - I mean, we can’t be.” 

Glynda observes them both carefully, expression flickering. There’s a truth creeping in the shadows of the room Blake’s not sure they’re ready for. Glynda says, “You’ve had the same eye color your entire lives?” And it sounds like the second before the explosion of a bomb.

“Yeah,” Yang says, shifting uncomfortably. Kids keep glancing back and forth, whispering to each other. Blake would be burning under the pressure of the attention if the universe weren’t about to crack wide open.

She seems to be weighing her options; tell them now and get it over with, or wait and make them suffer. She’s apparently not so cruel. “Well, girls,” she says, her mouth still a straight line, “Although this is highly unusual, I’m pleased to inform you that you are most _certainly_ soulmates.” She doesn’t wait for them to ask, noting their shock and disbelief and aptly marking them as unable to respond. “Has anyone ever heard of _true_ soulmates?” 

Even if someone _did_ know, the tension in the room’s too great for any of them to break alone. She continues on, unperturbed. Everything’s a teaching moment. “True soulmates are people who are born with the color of the other’s soul intrinsically linked to them - already reflected in their eyes. It’s their soul’s way of memory, if we’re being poetic about it. Most of us have lived many lives before, had many different soulmates - it’s why our eyes change. Because we do, and so do the people we love.” 

The absolute silence that has consumed the room is almost unsettling, eerie - or it would be if Blake could feel anything but the pressure of Yang’s fingers wrapped tightly around her knee. Her eyes are wide, lips still parted in awe. Blake feels herself trembling, but it isn’t _her,_ somehow, like she’s hearing this information from a great distance.

Glynda says, “True soulmates, however, do not change. They are drawn together over and over and over again without interruption, without respite. They’re destined to find each other, and the first time they meet in each life is often a powerful reckoning.” She directs a question to them again. “Does that correctly describe your experience?” 

Nothing even breathes. Somewhere beyond these walls, the planet stops spinning and waits. Finally, Blake whispers, “It was like - like the world ended.” She can’t meet Glynda’s stare as she talks, caught up in four years ago, and it’s still as vibrant as it’s always been. Yang at fourteen, awkward and lanky with the essence of time pooling in her hands. “You - I looked at you and I - you were everything. _Everything._ ” She whispers it to Yang only, keeps her gaze low.

Yang finds her fingers under the table, stands abruptly up, tugs Blake until she follows. She leads her out the doors, whispering rising behind them - _let them go,_ she vaguely hears Glynda say, _continuing the lesson_ \- through the halls, out to the courtyard, under the sun--

Yang spins, cups Blake’s face in her hands, and kisses her. 

There’s a desperation to it similar to their first kiss because that’s what it is: they’d been right all those years ago, murmuring in the darkness about being, being _something,_ being _more;_ now they have context on their side, they have truth, they have fate. Yang’s cheeks are wet with tears and she tastes like the ocean. The two of them don’t change. It’s been four years and a lifetime, and they’re still so young.

“I always loved lavender,” Yang whispers against her mouth, and it’s closer than home. “It’s because of you. It’s you.” 

“I love you,” Blake says back, kisses her lips again. The world ends, builds itself brand-new. “I always knew I was meant to.” 

Yang pulls away and meets her eyes, and Blake finds the color of her soul.


End file.
